01/04/12

The Top 50 Releases of 2011

Our critics pick the best new and historical recordings of the year

We compiled our top 40 new releases and top 10 historical/reissue recordings of 2011 using yearend lists by our writers. (They were asked to submit ranked lists of 10 new releases and five historical/reissues.) Only CDs and box sets released between Nov. 1, 2010 and Nov. 1, 2011 were eligible. Some albums may have slipped through the cracks, however, as official release dates shifted or weren’t available.

Capturing performances in Japan and at Rollins’ 80th birthday concert in New York, all in 2010, the second volume of Road Shows finds the Saxophone Colossus joined by a parade of high-profile guests—most notably Ornette Coleman. But even in all this illustrious company, the player here with the most ideas, the most muscle, the most stamina, the most juice, is Sonny Rollins. T.C.

2. JOE LOVANO US FIVEBird Songs (Blue Note)

On Bird Songs, the challenge facing Lovano—and it’s a formidable one—is to tastefully approach Charlie Parker’s iconic repertoire and his impeccably crafted alto saxophone playing as building blocks for previously unexplored possibilities. Lovano’s Us Five, a unique quintet with two drummers, hits its ambitious marks without ever sounding contrived. G.V.

3. AMBROSE AKINMUSIREWhen the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)

Akinmusire is staking his claim as the next important voice on the jazz trumpet with this disc, only his second album as a leader. He has chops, but he submerges his technique in a greater goal: creating powerful moods, then shattering and replacing them with different colors until an emotional narrative emerges. G.H.

Saxophonist Konitz, pianist Mehldau and bassist Haden had traveled this road before, in the ’90s for the Blue Note trio albums Alone Together and Another Shade of Blue. With the addition of the famously elastic drummer Motian, this collection of six patiently rendered standards finds their chemistry working at ethereal new heights. E.H.

5. MIGUEL ZENÓNAlma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis)

Zenón’s Alma Adentro, featuring his quartet and a 10-piece wind ensemble conducted and arranged by Guillermo Klein, is the alto saxophonist’s most ambitious exploration yet of Puerto Rico’s music. It is also his best. Zenón assumes command of each composition with a balance of domination and restraint, as the winds lend subtlety and color. M.J.W.

6. CHARLES LLOYD/MARIA FARANTOURIAthens Concert (ECM)

On this double-disc set recorded live at the base of the Acropolis, Lloyd’s New Quartet and Greek vocal icon Maria Farantouri deliver a stunning set of 18 starkly rendered songs in which simple melodic lines morph into full, sweeping gestures of emotion. Moody and minor-keyed for the most part, the performances vary in texture and mode: instrumental and vocal, with English, Greek and Byzantine lyrics. A.K.

7. JD ALLEN TRIOVictory! (Sunnyside)

Similar to Allen’s previous two albums, Victory! focuses on the saxophonist’s etude-like compositions and on the astonishing accord he’s forged with drummer Rudy Royston and bassist Gregg August. But Victory! is also Allen’s most relaxed-sounding effort yet, with 12 pieces that deliberately take on the form of a sonata suite in three movements: exposition, development and recapitulation. J.M.

8. CRAIG TABORNAvenging Angel (ECM)

This solo performance (and ECM debut) from the always in-demand pianist is an experiment in sound and silence. While brief melodic ideas underpin many of the pieces, equally central to the aesthetic is the actual sound—the reverberations of hammered strings, the oscillations, the durations of sustains. This is delicacy taken to new levels. S.G.

9. KEITH JARRETTRio (ECM)

With few exceptions, Jarrett now makes two kinds of albums: recordings of standards with his trio, and improvised live solo concerts. They are very different formats. The first begins with known form and opens it outward. The second chooses from infinite options and evolves spontaneous form. Everything at this solo concert in Brazil was pulled from free air, but it immediately sounds permanent. It is private emotion discovered as it is shared, and it resolves into acceptance. T.C.

10. ROY HAYNESRoy-alty (Dreyfus Jazz)

Roy-alty isn’t so much a showcase for the iconic drummer as it is the new recording by an exceptional band that just happens to have one of the all-time sticksmen keeping time. The album falls squarely into a well-defined postbop box, and Haynes is sharp enough to allow his much younger crew to direct the proceedings as often as he calls the shots himself. J.T.

1. MILES DAVIS QUINTETLive in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 (Columbia/Legacy)

This three-CD/DVD set captures the man with the horn’s fabled Second Great Quintet at the height of its breathtaking powers. The playing is so galvanizing in its emotional intensity, instrumental vigor and musical richness that some listeners may find the experience both exhilarating and draining. G.V.

2. FREDDIE HUBBARDPinnacle: Live and Unreleased From Keystone Korner(Resonance)

There are seven performances on this previously unreleased live set from 1980, and the 42-year-old Hubbard is positively combustible throughout, as fearsome and invincible as in his early Blue Note and Art Blakey days decades earlier. O.C.

3. JULIUS HEMPHILLDogon A.D. (International Phonograph)

At the risk of downplaying the music—a lean, mean, blues-and-grooves set from 1972, long out of print, that every avant fan needs to own—I’m going to home in on the product itself: a painstakingly detailed mini-LP gatefold with inserts that give Robert Palmer’s liner notes the size and space they deserve—a limited-run, bonus-track-bearing disc as “collectible” as they come. E.H.

4. MILES DAVISBitches Brew Live (Columbia/Legacy)

These recordings from Newport (’69, previously unreleased) and the Isle of Wight (’70), featuring musicians heard on the landmark albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, are a stunning reminder of the sheer intensity of the trumpeter’s early electric bands, and of the raw, rock-infused power Miles orchestrated. P.B.

Mosaic isn’t mucking around on this gargantuan 11-disc set that essentially distills the first grand age of Ellingtonia into the contents of one box. It represents the first full ripening of Ellington’s highly idiosyncratic and highly attuned big-band compositional style. As always, Mosaic has scraped away decades of grime, and most cuts are now eminently crankable. C.F.

1 Comment

I understand these lists are incredibly hard to compile and always leave a deserving artist/group off. That being said, I can't believe Omer Avital's "Free Forever" didn't make the top 40. The entire album is composed of original Avital compositions which are unique, engaging, and filled with soul and emotion. The playing of Avishai Cohen, Joel Frahm, and Jason LInder is easily some of the best of the year - Cohen & Frahm especially as they dig deep into their hearts for a wonderfully soulfull sound.